A Media Education Foundation Production.Roger Sorkin, 56 min, USA, 2013For years, there's been widespread speculation about the relationship between violent video games and violence in the real world. Joystick Warriors provides the clearest account yet of the latest research on this issue. Drawing on the insights of media scholars, military analysts, combat veterans, and gamers themselves, the film trains its sights on the wildly popular genre of first-person shooter games, exploring how the immersive experience they offer links up with the larger stories we tell ourselves as a culture about violence, militarism, guns, and manhood. Along the way, it examines the game industry's longstanding working relationship with the U.S. military and the American gun industry, and offers a riveting examination of the games themselves — showing how they work to sanitize, glamorize, and normalize violence while cultivating dangerously regressive attitudes and ideas about masculinity and militarism.

Panel discussion will follow led by Associate Producer Nina Huntemann.Nina B. Huntemann, Ph.D. is an associate professor of media studies at Suffolk University in the Department of Communication and Journalism. Her research focuses on new media technologies, particular video and computer games, and incorporates feminist, critical cultural studies and political economy perspectives. Most recently she co-edited with Matthew Thomas Payne the anthology Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games (Routledge, 2010). She produced and directed the educational video, Game Over: Gender, Race and Violence in Video Games (2000), distributed by the Media Education Foundation, and is currently creating an update to that film. She has published several articles on the image of women in video games, women's use of the Internet for social change, and the political economy of the US commercial radio industry.

75 minutes, 35mm, color, French and Arabic (subtitled in English)Through a collaboration with Balagan and collective Film Organics, we are very proud to present a brand new 35mm copy of Brûle la mer (Burn the Sea), made by Nathalie Nambot and Maki Berchache in 2014 and partially completed at the independent filmmakers' collective and laboratory L'abominable. A very special thanks to MoMA and the filmmakers for this fortuitous opportunity!

Brûle la mer stands at the paradoxical crossroads between the lively energy of a revolution in progress (Tunisia), the momentum of a departure to Europe, and the violence of a welcome declined. The film targets what constitutes the sensitive framework of an existence at a time of rupture; that which is the smallest, the most common, far from exoticism, but haunted by a dream, like an exhortation. It is not a film about emigration or revolution, it is an essay on freedom, or rather an essay that stages freedom: a real and fictitious attempt to escape which involves the making of a film, taking part in the process of emancipation: burning the sea, borders, laws, papers, etc. What does it mean to break with one's past life, leave one's country and family in which, somehow or other, strong links of solidarity, mutual assistance and ancestral ties to the land still prevail, and join a world mythologized and dominated by capitalist relationships? What is meant by 'living one's life'?

Up until 2009 Nathalie Nambot worked mainly as a theatre actress. She directed her first film Ami, entends tu in Moscow in 2010. She spends part of her time at L'abominable. She is also active with political collectives and illegal migrants fighting against social exclusion and repression.

Maki Berchache was born in Zarzis, Tunisia. He left school early and worked in several hotels and tourist complexes on the South East coast of Tunisia. He arrived in France just after the fall of Ben Ali. He was introduced to cinema at L'abominable by Nicolas Rey and Nathalie Nambot.

Steve Onderick Onderick, 100 minutes, US, 2014Vermin Supreme is no ordinary presidential candidate. Promising a free pony for every American, a fully funded time travel research program, and unprecedented zombie preparedness initiatives for a new American Republic, he truly is the people's candidate and the friendly fascist par excellence. Who Is Vermin Supreme? An Outsider Odyssey follows Vermin Supreme's raucous 2012 campaign from the Rainbow Gathering in the the Cherokee National Forest to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions to Occupy Wall Street protests, and all the way to heart of the American Empire in Washington, DC. From the unsettling gravitas of marauding riot police to the unbridled joy of songs sung for police officers and pranks played on anti-abortion fanatics, Who Is Vermin Supreme? is certain to show you America as you've never seen it before.

The Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing invites you to the WLP Reading Series Q&A session featuring Roxane Gay.

Roxane Gay's work has appeared in numerous publications including Best American Short Stories, the New York Times Book Review, Time, and Salon. She is the co-editor of PANK and essays editor for The Rumpus. In 2014, Gay released a collection of essays, Bad Feminist, and a novel, An Untamed State. Bad Feminist became a New York Times bestseller and was nominated for a 2014 NAACP Image Award.

The Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing invites you to the WLP Reading Series featuring Roxane Gay.

Roxane Gay's work has appeared in numerous publications including Best American Short Stories, the New York Times Book Review, Time, and Salon. She is the co-editor of PANK and essays editor for The Rumpus. In 2014, Gay released a collection of essays, Bad Feminist, and a novel, An Untamed State. Bad Feminist became a New York Times bestseller and was nominated for a 2014 NAACP Image Award.

Troop 2185 is the baddest Girl Scout troop on the block, and it's starting to take a toll on the adults. Through bad behavior, botched field trips, and a whole lot of cookies, everyone tries their best to make it through another year of scouting.

A three-week long festival of original student productions and performances featuring a new play of the winner of the annual Rod Parker Fellowship, a series of new works readings, and five original dance pieces choreographed by students.

A three-week long festival of original student productions and performances featuring a new play of the winner of the annual Rod Parker Fellowship, a series of new works readings, and five original dance pieces choreographed by students.

A three-week long festival of original student productions and performances featuring a new play of the winner of the annual Rod Parker Fellowship, a series of new works readings, and five original dance pieces choreographed by students.

A three-week long festival of original student productions and performances featuring a new play of the winner of the annual Rod Parker Fellowship, a series of new works readings, and five original dance pieces choreographed by students.

San Francisco filmmaker, curator, and archivist Craig Baldwin will be presenting a feature-length program of both old and new work, consummating in an expanded cinema performance. Mr. Baldwin will introduce sizeable excerpts from more than three titles in his filmography, in order to generate – in a sort of 'Artist Talk' mode – an argument about the possible uses of archival footage. The arc will proceed from collage to collage-essay to collage-narrative, demonstrated by sections from his early, middle, and current filmmaking periods.

Signe Baumane, 88 minutes, USA/Latvia, 2014In the new animated gem Rocks in My Pockets, Latvian-born artist and filmmaker Signe Baumane tells five fantastical tales based on the courageous women in her family and their battles with madness. With boundless imagination and a twisted sense of humor, she has created daring stories of art, romance, marriage, nature, business, and Eastern European upheaval—all in the fight for her own sanity. Employing a unique, beautifully textured combination of papier-mâché stop-motion and classic hand-drawn animation (with inspiration from Jan Svankmajer and Bill Plympton), Baumane has produced a poignant and often hilarious tale of mystery, mental health, redemption and survival.Discussion with filmmaker Signe Baumane will follow the screening.

The Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing is proud to announce the next event in the Faculty & Alumni Reading Series: Senior Lecturer Steve Himmer and MFA Mary Helen Specht.

Steve Himmer is a senior lecturer at Emerson College and editor of the webjournal Necessary Fiction. Himmer's work has appeared in The Millions, Ploughshares online, and the Los Angeles Review. His first novel, The Bee-Loud Glade, was named a 2011 Great Summer Read by NPR's On Point. Himmer recently released his second novel, Fram, and has another novel, Scratch, forthcoming in 2016.

Mary Helen Specht holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. She has been published in the New York Times, The Colorado Review, and Night Train. She received Night Train's Richard Yates Short Story Award and has been nominated for multiple Puschart Prizes. Specht recently released her debut novel, Migratory Animals.

Bright Lights: Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky

3/31/157:00 pm - 9:00 pmParamount CenterBright Family Screening Room

Michel Gondry, 88minutes, France, 2013From Michel Gondry, the innovative director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep, comes this unique animated documentary on the life of controversial MIT professor, philosopher, linguist, anti-war activist and political firebrand Noam Chomsky. Through complex, lively conversations with Chomsky and brilliant illustrations by Gondry himself, the film reveals the life and work of the father of modern linguistics while also exploring his theories on the emergence of language. The result is not only a dazzling, vital portrait of one of the foremost thinkers of modern times, but also a beautifully animated work of art. Discussion with VMA faculty who contributed to the production will follow.